After firing Matt Rhule on Monday morning, the Carolina Panthers named defensive pass game coordinator and secondary coach Steve Wilks the team’s interim head coach.
Wilks, a Charlotte, N.C. native, attended West Charlotte High School before playing his college football at Appalachian State University from 1987 to 1991. Since then, he has accrued over 25 seasons of coaching experience between the collegiate and professional levels—including a stint with the Panthers from 2012 to 2017.
He moved up the coaching ranks, starting as a defensive backs coach from 2012 to 2016 and eventually becoming the team’s defensive coordinator in 2017. During that stretch, he helped make Carolina’s defense a top-10 unit in the league—playing a hand in four playoff appearances and a Super Bowl run in 2015.
Wilks then left the Panthers to become the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals in 2018. Immediately following his first season in Arizona, where the Cardinals finished with a 3-13 record, he was fired and replaced by Kliff Kingsbury—a coach elevated directly from the collegiate ranks to an NFL head coaching position.
Wilks recently joined Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the NFL alleging racial discrimination, stating in an amended complaint that the Cardinals hired him as a “bridge coach” and that he was not given any meaningful chance to succeed under general manager Steve Keim.
Since leaving Arizona, Wilks worked as the defensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns in 2019 and for the University of Missouri in 2021. Now, he makes his return to a Panthers team suffering under a rebuilding process that seems to have stagnated under owner David Tepper.
Wilks is an experienced and respected coach who will look to revive a Panthers team currently in possession of the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NFL draft. However, most of Carolina’s problems this season have been offensive—so it may take more than just a head-coaching change to effect some change on the Panthers’ record.
Here’s to hoping Wilks can turn this around (and bring Carolina fans back to their home stadium).
